Fade Rift Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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faderift2022-09-05 11:21 am
faderifting) wrote in faderift2022-09-05 11:21 am
MOD PLOT ↠ BEFORE THE GATES | PUZZLE LOG
WHO: Bastien, Byerly, Cosima, Derrica, Edgard, Ellis, Flint, Gwenaëlle, Josias, Loxley, Marcus, Mobius, Redvers, Sidony, Tiffany, Tony, Viktor
WHAT: Puzzles and sacrifice
WHEN: Mid Kingsway
WHERE: A temple in Arlathan Forest
NOTES: See also OOC post, open log.
WHAT: Puzzles and sacrifice
WHEN: Mid Kingsway
WHERE: A temple in Arlathan Forest
NOTES: See also OOC post, open log.
The search pays off, after a few weeks, when a team—every team, independently, separated from the others by foliage and time, and unaware they aren't the only ones—stumbles upon a sizable contingent of Venatori and their allies making steady progress toward a ruined temple complex. It's too large a group for any four- or five-person team to combat directly. But they can outrun them. Whether they dash ahead of the enemy unseen or pause first to ambush or delay them, they'll beat them to the ruins. The forest is so densely grown up around and over its remnants that it's impossible to get a sense of the full scale, but something about the size of the walls and doorways arching high overhead, the opulence of the carvings and mosaics even encrusted by millenia of moss, suggests an important site. And there's a feeling, too, a spine-prickling sense of mingled excitement and foreboding, that whispers this must be the place.
That feeling is confirmed by the contents of the mosaics lining the walls, depicting a glowing golden city with a familiar arrangement of spires and towers. Looking at it causes a strangely powerful sense of deja vu until someone puts it together—these same towers now haunt the Fade, their blackened heights always visible, never reachable. The mosaic of the city circles what looks once to have been a great temple hall, perspective sloping to draw the eye to the only other doorway out of this space, an arched portal opposite, gilded to appear as if it's part of the mosaic, as if walking through it might take one through the walls of the golden city itself.
Each team will reach this temple alone and will travel through it alone. As far as they will be able to tell, they are the only ones to have made it here—perhaps the only people to set foot inside it in a thousand years or more—and the combination of time distortion and crystal lapses will make it impossible to determine otherwise. They can send all the messages they like while inside the complex, but will receive no replies until it's all over. As far as they know, they are the only people with this chance to investigate by far the most promising site Riftwatch has found in the forest. The enemy is going to arrive soon to take whatever is here, and if they leave here now who knows how long it might take to find it again.
Once they're inside, their passage through the temple will follow a linear path, with no opportunities to branch off or divide their party. There is a single route to follow, and the walls are still high and sheer and thick enough to stop them going over or under or through. Each room will present a new trial, a puzzle to be solved, feats of strength and cunning and bravery to be accomplished before the way forward is revealed. If they take the time to clear away some of the vines and study the statues and reliefs, they'll find that each room is dedicated to one or more of the Elvhen gods, which may provide clues if they know their pantheon.
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The crushing weight of all that rests on this moment, this sacrifice, bears down on her as Loxley opens his hands in hers. It is the cue to let go of him. Allow whatever is about to begin to take its course. They have all agreed on the necessity of fulfilling the terms of this bargain.
And Loxley didn't take her up on the offer to try and barter their way to some other arrangemnet.
If she weren't so aware that these last dwindling seconds were the last of the time allotted to her to look into Loxley's face, she might have looked over his shoulder at the Commander. Derrica has never cared to have so much of her entanglements known, much less observed, by him. And the echoing similarity of Gwenaëlle alongside him only serves to include her in that feeling, far off as it is.
But this is an ending, and Loxley's face is so solemn as he invites her to let go of him. If she kisses him something in her will crack open, so the entirety of that impulse is contained to the vise grip of her hand on his as she tells Loxley, "I'll find you again. I promise."
Why withhold this intention, when she's more or less made clear her capabilities?
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That's not one of them. It's with a touch of gallows humour that he says, "It's a date," and then abruptly can't stand this conversation—or any conversation, with anyone—much longer.
He'd been mediating something similar in himself, as wrong as it feels not to reach for her more than he has, but he breaks it in the moment to use his greater height and duck in, kissing high up on her cheek, before moving back. Away. His hands from her tight grasp, his shadow off the wall, turning away with an intent that is far from eager but no more hesitant for it.
Fuck fuck fuck. Heart racing, but at least with his back to them all, he doesn't have to crush down fear as hard as he has been, feeling a cold dash of it as he turns to the mosaic. As long as he can keep it from his voice, he can rest somewhat assured of having done this right.
"Hello," he says, at the wall. "We've done what you've said, and. It's me, I'll do it. We're agreed."
Sort of.
The mosaic tiles ripple with a purr of stone, that voice filling the room once more. Approval, gladness that they've understood the importance of what the spirit has to give, assurance that they would spare this life in exchange of
blah blah blah, Loxley's posture slackens, stepping back, a breath leaving him that turns out not to be his last as he bows forward some, hands resting on his knees.
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—is not the most articulate response, but it is the first thing out of Gwenaëlle's mouth in the dizzying elation of relief, narrowly avoiding bonking Loxley in the back with his own sword as she fumbles it under her elbow to lay a hand on his back, the start of a truly awkwardly angled but extremely fervent embrace.
How rarely they're ever actually rewarded for trying to do the right thing. Though, when she straightens, it feels — a little less like a reward — she's nearest and not bent over, so the mosaic takes up bargaining for her sacrifice. A secret, a memory, or,
“The eye,” Gwenaëlle agrees, before she can think better of it, something cold gripping the back of her neck at the thought of relinquishing any of her memories. “You can take my eye.”
It doesn't hurt.
no subject
It's the sort of alleged mercy that leaves Flint just bristling and back footed enough to delay the impulse to take some argumentative step forward. To what end would his boot been committed to, exactly? Impossible to say, but occasionally instinct rules even men who imagine themselves very rational. And then Gwenaëlle's eye is gone as if carved from her face a month ago rather than a moment prior.
He balks. The rasp of the mural's turn sighs through the chamber, undeterred by what absences are left in its wake. Sylaise, the Hearthkeeper with her fire and thread and gloss gold laurels, asks Your sword, or your ship, Captain?, and that answer too is frustratingly obvious.
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Surely now is the point in which she might say something, draw a line and reorient the flow of events within this chamber. ( Or perhaps to say only, Don't look at them, because she is angry and there is a clear point at which to direct that anger.) Now she might bind and barter the way she had been raised to because the terms are something else entirely, except—
Except there is no time still. There is no bargaining. There is only Gwenaëlle and the Commander both answering, the mosaic clattering as gods rotate in and out, sated by their newfound spoils.
There is a decision for her too.
Falon'Din's voice is a murmuring bass, chiming a rumbling harmony with the delicate chorus of Dirthamen and Sylaise.
Give up your dead twining and layering over Give us your mother tongue.
The answer is clear, just as it was clear that she could not volunteer herself. But it is agony. Her throat burns cold then hot, and every word of Rivaini is gone from her.
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Loxley does not get so far as to say that out loud, wait, but it's all he can think when Gwenaëlle speaks, when those mutating voices swirl through the chamber, the ghostly extraction of prizes. He's straightened up now, his hand reaching out to Derrica's wrist, his other hovered in front of Gwenaëlle, flinching when he marks what's been stolen from the former. Guilt, a cold sweep of it on the tail of relief.
Then to him, last, the image of Andruil assembling itself where Dirthamen had been, Sylaise's presence still mingling together.
Your trust of a friend, born of battles and burdens, says one, and the other—
His hesitation is not indecision, for there's only once answer for him as well. The eye, and perhaps Andruil had wanted a matching set, when the one opposite to Gwenaëlle's disappears out from his face.
no subject
oh, he's probably going to want that back, now.
The glow of the mosaic is not blinding, but its absence when the tiles slide away to allow them through nearly disorients her again, as if for a moment she'd forgotten what they were doing this for. And she hadn't, it just— overwhelms, briefly, the enormity of the thing that's just been done. How near it'd been to something else, worse.
Gwenaëlle casts a look around at the others, at the myriad of emotions, the thick tension of the room,
it's Loxley she goes to, pressing him into a hug before she can think better of not waiting to see if it's welcome.
“Can I still have your sword?”
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It would be a kindness linger briefly in the great doorway opened to them and make sense of what's just happened—all this having clipped along at the kind of speed that inspires vertigo. Let Gwenaëlle and Loxley sort the matter of his sword as substitute for something else, and let Derrica be furious. Instead, with the urgency of vulnerability buzzing at the base of his skull, Flint strikes forward. He zags deftly around and between them and moves purposefully into the room that's been opened to them.
It's possible they've only won minutes with all this decisiveness. It would be unbearable to risk wasting them.
no subject
Gwenaëlle snares him into a hug, and there had been no sense of momentum in him to interrupt, hands landing on her before he gives a slightly choked sounding laugh and returns the embrace more fiercely. Senses Flint's motion forward. Senses Derrica leaving his side.
But there it is, just a sliver of it, in all the confusing rest of it, a pulse of adrenaline of a near miss.
"Absolutely the fuck not," he whispers back to her, but he doesn't muddle in place anymore than that, grabbing the hand holding the bundle of leather and steel, and pulling them both along out into the way forward.